Horns

Horns has a silly grabber of a premise: The protagonist, Ig Perrish, wakes up after a night of heavy drinking and doing bad things -- he can't quite remember what -- to find that he has horns growing out of his forehead.

It's not long before Ig figures out that everyone he meets is compelled to confess their deepest sins and darkest desires to him, and he can grant them permission to act on them. He is literally becoming the devil on their shoulders.

There wouldn't be much of anywhere to go from here, except Hill takes us into Ig's back story, so we can care more about him and his girlfriend, Merrin, who was raped and murdered about a year ago and is the center of the novel's strange events. Hill's writing is easy to read and show more suspenseful, but unfortunately, things fall apart a bit in the third act (despite some wonderfully grotesque scenes featuring snakes). There were a few plot holes I couldn't get past, and least one underdeveloped character turned out to have a surprisingly important role. While not as good as his debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, Horns is still a fun read, especially around Halloween. show less

Part murder mystery and part romance that wades into debates of theology and morality. This is a mutifaeted novel that does what the best genre fiction does, which is push against genre. Despite his comfortable upbringing, Ig really goes through hell (pun intended) and you root for him the whole way, perhaps with some reservations as a good dose of moral ambiguity is thrown in. There aren't really any static , cut and dry characters here. Everybody changes or reveals themselves in different ways, which is a hallmark of great storytelling. I have to say that I aborted attempts to finish three or four Stephen King novels over the years for whatever reason. Joe Hill, though similarly attuned to details, writes in a different way about show more different characters. The comparisons to his dad are too lazy. If you like genre fiction that pushes against genre, or even if you're more or a literary snob like me, give this a chance. show less

I’m not the kind of person who gets deeply philosophical or who seeks deeper symbolism in a book. I suppose I’m too shallow, I just want to be entertained with a good story and maybe the occasional snicker….

But then, every once in a while, a writer like Joe Hill and a book like Horns sneaks up on me, and smacks me upside the head. True to my shallow nature, I loved the book for the entertainment factor, but it also sucked me into some internal philosophical debate as well.

Is the book blasphemous? Ehh..probably, but it does make you think. What is evil? Is good ever really just evil disguised? And how often do we perceive of something being good that is really evil?

I still don’t know how Hill pulled it off, if I had to explain show more the book I’d be hard pressed to do have it make sense. But the author manages to tread that fine line between Wow! and Huh? quite nicely. His characterizations are strong, his protagonist earns our respect as well as our compassion, and his conflicts are convoluted and yet understandable.

Horns by Joe Hill, is a devilishly good read…(sorry—couldn’t resist--*Grin)

Review copy provided by Harper Collins show less

I decided to finally get round to reading this novel from Joe Hill after it had sat on my shelf unloved since a great book-buying binge in early 2013. However, unlike many books which I get around to reading after a long period of procrastination, I did not love Horns. But nor did I hate it. In truth, there was not enough in it to inspire in me either a great liking or a great distaste. Peculiarly but aptly given the subject matter, Horns soon began to nestle into an indifferent middle-ground, a sort of critical purgatory.

The idea behind it is arresting; a year on from the unsolved rape and murder of his girlfriend Merrin, a young man named Ig wakes up from a self-pitying drunken stupor to find he has grown Satan-like horns from his show more head. Now he can hear the darkest innermost thoughts of the people around him, and he uses this new power to try and find out who killed his beloved soulmate.

The problem is the execution. I feel I should point out straight off the bat that Joe Hill is an assured writer; the prose rolls along easily and the characters feel human. I have not read much by his famous father, Stephen King (Joe Hill is a pseudonym), but Horns did seem to be in that vein: creepy supernatural goings-on in small-town America. I don't believe in all that guff about children inheriting their parents' artistic gifts – I've always been on the side of nurture over nature – but the similarities in tone and style are uncanny. All I'll say is King is not shamed by his literary association with Hill, and Hill's style is developed enough to be judged on its own merits rather than as his father's son.

However, there are some kinks in Horns that just won't iron out no matter how much heat Hill applies. For one, Ig finds out the identity of the real killer quite early on; there are no misdirects or building of suspense – we just find out. Consequently, the initial mystery is lost and the rest of the sizeable novel is a rather sludgy process of the villain getting his comeuppance. The only new facts we are fed go into how it happened and why, but these only add shade to the existing picture rather than presenting us with admission to a wider gallery.

The supernatural stuff also lacks a thematic baseline, or at least a robust and coherent one. Even now, I don't see the method or the meaning behind the horns. So is the Devil the good guy or the bad guy – the anti-hero cleaning up the dregs of society or a tempting villain drawing Ig away from goodness? I get the impression from Hill that the former is intended, but how to explain the boon of Merrin's cross? Or the 'treehouse of the mind' stuff? Or whatever the hell was happening in the confusing ending? No explanation is even given as to how or why Ig grows the horns; no underlying mythology to explain how such a thing could come about. It asks a lot of the reader's suspension of disbelief: the reader soon stops asking questions as it becomes clear no answers will be given. The theological ideas don't go anywhere and seem to be only loosely bolted onto the story, like a spice added to a rather mundane dish. Horns cannot be called a morality tale: the ending is, if you think about it, not a happy one or even a vindicatory one. The bad guys got theirs, even if it cost them in the long run, whilst the lives of the good guys were irreparably destroyed.

And, to be honest, it is this which is responsible for most of my negativity towards the novel. It is unceasingly bleak. Ig can read people's thoughts, and it seems that in Gideon (Ig's hometown) everyone is a sexual pervert. They don't just think these things, like many ordinary people might do, but act on them: the thoughts Ig reads are not mere thoughts but cover-ups of depraved things these ordinary folk have done in the past. And it goes beyond mere sexual perversion. Parents secretly but passionately hate their children. A waitress glories in providing unrepentant false testimony to the police. One man presents a public image of caring for his sick mother, who has dementia, whilst privately torturing her. This is less small-town America than a carbon copy of Sodom and Gomorrah. No one in the story ever seems to do a decent thing for another person; tonally, the novel feels off.

These are nasty details, and unnecessary in a novel that is already about something incredibly tragic: the rape and murder of a young woman and the guilt her devoted boyfriend lives with, a guilt made worse by knowing everyone thinks he did it (even, secretly, his parents) and that the real killer got away scot-free. It seems at times like Hill is just trying to concoct a smorgasbord of the most depressingly evil things he can think of and cramming them into a story that cannot really take such weight and strain. For example, at one point the real killer taunts Ig by saying that his girlfriend climaxed when he raped her. Particularly when this later proves to be false, it seems to be a detail added by the writer just to make things that little bit nastier for everyone involved. I am not a delicate flower by any means but, for all the craft of its author, Horns was an unpleasant struggle for me to get through.

Consequently, I feel entirely unconcerned that Horns rests in my own personal critical purgatory. The writing was too good for me to trash the novel, but the depths to which it sinks are too low for me to want to reach down and lift it higher. Reading Horns was like driving in a car with wobbly wheel bearings: it'll get you to where you're going but you might be a bit woozy when you get there. And you'll wonder if it was worth making the journey in the first place. There's not even a shred of escapism in this supernatural-fantasy novel: the good guys lose hard and the bad guys coast through life. The best of the cynical writers who chronicle the dark side of humanity and human society recognise the artistic need for darkness to be juxtaposed with even just a sliver of light, but this chiaroscuro is almost completely absent from Horns. show less

Like Heart-Shaped Box before it, despite some faults Horns is a thoroughly gripping book - it's a fast read that you won't want to put down. The pacing is excellent, backstory and new revelations happen at just the right tempo so everything is always getting deeper, richer, more interesting. This isn't a "scary" horror book. Don't expect the chills and thrills of a good ghost story. It's just dark, supernatural subject matter with a theological bent. I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who thinks it sounds interesting!

That said, I did have two hard-to-ignore issues with it:

The first is the main character, Ig. Not far into the book he does something that makes him immensely unlikable and I never quite got over it. That's just show more me, though. The real problem here is his character is quite defined enough - you never really know what he's feeling about anything at all. Toward the end of the book, Ig has his big turning point and proceeds to spout a lengthy sermon about the nature of good and evil which just felt... ridiculous. He's still not giving you much insight into his head, and it just comes off like Joe Hill wanting to write a speech and sound insightful. Essentially at the end of the book Ig needs to decide which side he's on and when he chooses, you sort of aren't sure why he picked that route and it feels a little sudden. Frankly, it probably would have felt jarring if he'd chosen the other side, too.

Ig's backstory also feels contradictory. A lot of people who are very close to Ig and should love him dearly UNQUESTIONABLY think he's guilty of the most heinous of crimes - one character even suggests that there's always been something "off" about him. However, that contradicts nearly everything shown about Ig through flashbacks. The two people who are closest to him describe him as good and pure-hearted almost to a fault, and we never see him do anything bad until the horns take him. Overall it left me feeling confused and annoyed. Particularly because there's at least one thing that's never explained that hints toward something darker that just feels at odds with everything else.

The other issue is the villain. He's a lazy pastiche of sociopath stereotypes. The first time you see things from his perspective, it's genuinely chilling. You want him to pay for his crimes - hard. But then it just keeps going. Not only his he a misogynistic murderer fueled by sexual frustrations, but he's casually racist too? It just feels silly and overdone. And of course, he has mommy issues, kills animals, serious delusions, and was a bed wetter. Gimme a break.

It doesn't just end with the villain though - with Ig's power, everyone is more than happy to share their dirty, dark secrets with him. This also feels overdone. EVERYONE has deeply fucked up secrets here, to the point that it's not really believable. Again, casual racism and misogyny are used for shock value and it ends up just feeling silly and hard to swallow. C'mon man, nobody in this day and age says "jigaboo."

The ending is also a bit of a mixed bag. It's much, much stronger than the ending to Heart-Shaped Box and the build up to it is even better. There's a few things that come back from earlier in the story to dovetail nicely into the end, and the Big Bad gets the just desserts you so desperately want him to have. However as I mentioned above, Ig's choice and its resolution come off as feeling... sudden, immature, and even a little confusing. His personal reward at the end didn't make a whole lot of sense. It felt like it tried too hard to give him a happy ending. Ehh.

All in all, though, it's a really solid book and I can't wait to see what horrors Joe Hill has in store for us next! show less

This book was a roller coaster - it made me shudder, cringe, bite my nails, laugh, and even cry. It's one of the scariest, most disturbing novels I've ever read, and I loved it.

The premise is unique and if you're interested in theology or religion, you'll love the story's twist on the Devil. Here, he's not pure evil, but the embodiment of our flawed human nature. The Devil manifests through the protagonist Iggy, helping him to fight a sociopath whose inhumanity makes him scarier and more evil than any sinful desire the Devil could ever conjure up. Iggy is certainly not a hero in the traditional sense, but in the face of such a monstrous villain, you can't help but root for him. After all, there's a little devil in all of us, even if we show more try to hide it, and this story draws on that concept in a major way.

Right from the beginning, you know something terrible is going to happen, so there's a constant sense of foreboding underlying the narrative. Even though you know what's coming, it's still shocking when it finally happens. I also liked getting to experience the story’s most intense scene from the villain's perspective because it made the moment that much more horrible. If I wasn't already on the Devil's side, I definitely was after that.

One of the biggest surprises comes near the end when a huge revelation makes you see the entire story in a new light. There’s an incredibly satisfying “Ah ha!” moment when the curtain is finally drawn back and you realize that there’s even more depth to the already complex, multilayered characters.

The events of the story are tragic and deeply sad, yet it never looses the element of horror. At times, it's outright terrifying, demented, gross, and purposely shocking. (If you have a severe phobia of snakes, don't read this book!) It's extremely thought provoking, with a compelling plot and a sympathetic antihero. Overall, I really enjoyed Horns and it’s a story that's undoubtedly going to stay with me for quite a while. show less

The existence of God and Satan; the essence of good and evil; the true nature of man at birth – all of these most basic theological issues have been viciously debated by philosophers, preachers, and poets for ages. The wide ranging choices in religion and ethics in the world speak to the diversity of thought on these topics. Whatever your position, Joe Hill’s [Horns] forces you to confront your beliefs, and the experience may be uncomfortable.

After a hazy night of alcohol morbidly, celebrating the anniversary of his fiancé’s brutal murder, Ignatius Perrish awakes to find horns growing from his head, pointed and sore from their eruption. Worse yet, the horns induce raw confessions from people. When Ig shows the horns to someone, show more they unburden their deepest, most sinful yearnings. Glenna, Ig’s live-in girlfriend, begins binge-eating and, between glazed bites of doughnut, she admits to an episode of parking lot sex with his best friend. Ig’s doctor reveals a substance abuse problem and an unhealthy fascination with his teen-aged daughter’s best-friend. But the real shocker comes for Ig when his friends and family begin sharing details about the night of his fiancé’s murder. As the confessions mount, an unholy conversion begins in Ig, until he stands at the brink of losing either his humanity or his soul, or both.

Let me leave my own confession in the shadow of Ig’s horns – [Horns] was a difficult book to read and an even more difficult book to enjoy. I’ve seen my fair share of criticism for books that offended the critic’s personal sensibilities. I’ve chaffed at the loss of objectivity or the gall at a critic’s refusal to place a book in its proper cultural context. But the truth is that a book can reach too deep into the soul of a reader or cross too far into the protected regions of belief and value. Sometimes those books offer a stiff challenge, an opportunity to expand perspective and thought; other times the book is too much of a stretch, too far out of the comfort zone.

[Horns], for me, was outside the comfort zone. Ig was too susceptible to evil, reveled too easily in the practice of it. The characters who confessed their darkest thoughts seemed altogether devoid of any redeeming quality, and Ig’s world seemed altogether devoid of any trace of goodness. Not until the final pages does anyone finally dare to choose selflessness over self-indulgence, good over evil. By the time I was done with the book I felt exhausted and battered.

To be fair, I am a Joe Hill fan. While [Horns] may not be my favorite book, Hill is a consummate story teller and character builder. Hill brings a rare subtlety and comprehensiveness to every character’s life and choices. And the hint of melancholy sentiment that Hill manages to evoke as Ig looks back over his life is Bradburyesque.

Bottom Line: [Horns] may not be for everyone; depending on your perspective, it will either exhilarate or revolt you. On balance, I’d say Joe Hill would probably be happy either way.

3 bones!!! show less